


been a long time comin' (gonna stab your kissy kissy heart)

by burying_songs



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-25
Updated: 2010-11-25
Packaged: 2017-10-24 00:49:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/256996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burying_songs/pseuds/burying_songs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place immediately post 1x01; inspired by the song "Kissy Kissy" by The Kills</p>
            </blockquote>





	been a long time comin' (gonna stab your kissy kissy heart)

>   
> _“If we shag ass we can be there by morning.” --- Dean Winchester, 1x01 Pilot_   
> 

 

Sam can’t get rid of the smell.

He stripped off his jacket and shirts right there, tossed them into the trunk when he knew he was never going to touch them again. What he pulled on instead must be Dean’s, too short, too loose, too soft. Sam doesn’t wear his clothes to rags these days. He should feel clean, stripped, but he doesn’t. Burning and blood stain his jeans, his skin. The smell crouches in his hair, striking claws sharp with every turn of his head.

Sam tries to keep still.

His eyes are stinging; he can’t look at anything for long. Red and blue lights flashing, Dean cursing under his breath as he struggles to push through the throng of emergency vehicles, the noise of the rubber-neckers, it rolls over Sam with the weight of wool, reaching him in muffled bursts. He’s too big for this car now; that’s the first thing he noticed when they left for Jericho two days ago. His life had grown into something this space cannot contain, something bigger than the man beside him. And now all that, the life he’s been building for four years, it’s gone.

Dean doesn’t want them around when folks start asking questions, drives them thirty minutes to a shitty ground floor motel room in Half Moon Bay. The mattress sags and Sam can hear the ocean outside the window. It roars like flames.

He lies down, stares up at the ceiling and tongues his teeth. If he digs deep enough he can chase the sugar and chocolate of Jess’ cookies. Breathing in slow and long, he smells smoke and burnt meat and he gags.

Dean drifts in and out of the room, dragging in bags full of clothing and weapons. Salt is spread across the threshold, wards set in the door jamb. Sam watches his puttering through heavy-laden eyes; his body is an insubstantial thing, a cage of bone and paper-thin skin for the chasm inside threatening to swallow him whole.

Oblivious to his sinking, Dean cuts his gaze towards Sam before disappearing into the bathroom, phone in hand. Sam has no idea who he could be calling and he doesn’t care. The bedspread beneath his hands is grainy with sand, faded just like the paint on the walls. Sam will never see this room again. He fears that the feel of sand will burn itself into the shape of this night, the image of Jess engulfed on the ceiling.

Time passes but it’s still dark when Dean emerges from the bathroom. He’s shrugged off his coat, which he drapes across the table. Sam can feel his stare from the bed but he doesn’t look. Words hang like curtains between them; Sam’s adrift and Dean is so very far away. A chair scrapes across the floor and Sam doesn’t have to work to imagine his brother’s frame tense and waiting.

Neither Winchester sleeps.

=/=/=/=

They stay in Half Moon Bay for a week, Dean driving them quietly from the motel back to Palo Alto where they spend the days searching for the evil that killed Jessica. Sam finds it difficult to push words from his chest and so his brother does most of the heavy lifting. Steering clear of the authorities remains Dean’s primary objective, with information gathering running a close second. Sam’s peripherally aware of his brother’s machinations, knows when he’s left in the library, anonymous amongst the harried end-of-term students, that Dean is canvassing his neighbors, classmates, and friends.

It doesn’t surprise him that Dean never asks him for names or addresses. They may not have been in contact for over two years, but Sam is still frighteningly attuned to his brother. More than once he’s felt Dean in a freaky, sixth-sense sort of way, felt his eyes and imagined his voice. Sam knows it down to his bones that he’s never been alone in this, not ever. The knowledge is an uncommon comfort.

He reads until his eyes blur, allows Dean drag him around in the car to this supernatural expert and that curio shop, even lets John Panozzo pay for a reading from a psychic “guaranteed” to reach the spirit realm. They don’t reach Jess and Dean is, to Sam’s way of thinking, irrationally upset by the failure. He bitches the whole way back to the motel, mouth curled up in a sneer at the worth of Miss Lorelei’s chosen profession, drinks enough whiskey to dump him into unconsciousness once they’re back in their stuffy, too-small room.

Sam sleeps. Sam dreams; Jess in the kitchen, obscured by the open door on their high cabinets, the gold cascade of her hair and her bare legs all the Sam can see. Jess, hunched over textbooks, laughing at the market, her hands, the mole between her eyebrows, her mouth open and gasping his name. Jess burning, her hair turned to flames. Jess burning.

Sam wakes and swears that Dean can hear the pounding under his ribs because his brother is right there, hands heavy against Sam’s heart, lips offering words that are eaten by the fire. Sam watches his brother’s mouth move and remembers a time when Dean, that mouth, salved every hurt.

The memories become a welcome distraction as the week drags. Dean grows increasingly frustrated with the lack of chase-able leads, stubbornly determined to fix this when Sam wants to tell him not to bother. There is no fixing the broken thing inside of him. Sam can barely be grateful for the effort.

He doesn’t go to the memorial, too guilty even to consider it even if it wasn’t occurring thousands of miles away in Jess’ home state of South Carolina. Even so, Dean offers to make the drive, his jaw soft, eyes damp. He keeps looking at Sam, so much that it hurts, and Sam wishes he would stop before everything he’s been shoving into the small, dark corners of himself is exposed.

Sam thinks about being small, smaller than Dean, when a scraped elbow warranted rubbing alcohol and the press of his brother’s lips in equal measure. When Dean hangs up on another unanswered phone call to John, Sam remembers his earliest heartbreak, the way he’d felt Dean’s mouth on his own for the first time soon after. The way everything fuzzed along the edges for that brief instant of contact.

There were moments as a teenager, bullheaded and lashing out at every abnormal, insane part of his life, that Sam wanted to be as far from his brother as possible. Wanted nothing to do with Dean, the hunting he loved, the father he obeyed unquestioningly, the deep ache he drew from Sam like water. Then there were the nights Dean would return from a hunt, bleeding or celebratory, when he would smile and cajole and wheedle Sam until he forced a laugh. Those were the times when Sam wanted little beyond the wanting itself; desperate to press himself into his brother’s skin, the pulse of his blood. He wanted to disappear into Dean, be swallowed up and kept safe, forever.

Too much, too hard, and Sam felt like a monster; drawn towards Dean unnatural and insistent and evil enough to deserve the edge of his sharpest blade. Dean standing too close, pulling Sam just far enough, always teetering on the edge of the fall; it wasn’t innocent. All of it had dulled with the distance Sam put between them, shrunk to nothing and huddled quiet and still. He screened his calls, ignored the rumble of his heart, forgot. Tries to keep on forgetting every time Dean looks his way.

Sunday comes and they’re where they started, hands empty at the husk of a burned building. Sam packed their bags and dumped them in the trunk of the Impala before breakfast, the action and its implication drawing no comment from his brother.

“Sam,” Dean says quietly, squinting at the lines of slack police tape that sway before the gaping doorway.

Everything in Sam draws tight. Through the doorway he can see their mailbox, still has the key in his pocket.

“There’s nothing here,” Sam says low, “let’s go find Dad.”

=\=\=\=

Dean doesn’t have to be asked twice and he relaxes once they’re back on the road. The belief that there is nothing the road cannot heal is strong in his brother, and Sam tries to let himself fall into the lie as they leave California. With every mile towards the desert he grows more frantic, skin itching, the burn returning to his eyes. Logically Sam knows there’s nothing more to be done in Palo Alto; they’ve both reached the same conclusion—the thing that killed Jess is very likely the same thing that killed their mother—and that means that this is bigger than them. As much as he wants to horde his pain and keep it close, this loss doesn’t belong to Sam solely. Dean is right; they need to find their father. None of this stops Sam from feeling like he’s being yanked out of his own skin.

Nevada feels like Hell, dry heat and furnace baked, the most appropriate punishment. The sun burns across the last clouds in the sky, leaving startling shadows on the tiny two lane Dean guides them down. He pulls into a station outside Warm Springs, nudging Sam out of the car for a pit stop. Dean ducks into the restroom, confidence borne from history that remembers Sam getting the necessary supplies like the obedient little brother he’s supposed to be. Wind kicks up the dirt in the parking lot; it swirls around Sam’s ankles and pulls him out towards the distant line of the hills. He squints into the mirage waves on the horizon and wonders how far he’d have to walk to leave himself behind.

Sam only makes it fifty feet from the station before he hears the steady fall of his brother’s boots. Dean catches his sleeve from behind, turns him easily. His eyes are oasis green where he looks up and Sam wants.

There’s no finesse in the way he smashes into Dean, the kiss a wild, bucking thing Sam dropped the reins to long ago. Dean grips his elbows, to push away or pull close Sam can’t figure, knows only the way Dean’s mouth opens willingly beneath his own.

Why Sam left, this, his brother and his filthy, needy mouth. Sam feasts wholly and he hates Dean then, the perfection he’s being offered. He sucks the plump swell of Dean’s lower lip into a bite, thrusts his tongue deep and insistent, hates the noises he can hear well from his own throat. Dean holds him close, boot hooked between Sam’s, iron hand shifting from Sam’s arm to his nape, shoving them hard together. The lightheaded burn of empty lungs forces them apart but Dean’s grip doesn’t ease. Sam gasps into the leather of Dean’s jacket, sobbing onto the offered shoulder, eyes still burning and dry. He feels Dean’s hand in his hair and that somehow makes it worse.

“Sam, Sammy, c’mon,” Dean murmurs, unconcerned that they’re wide in the open, Sam clutching to him for dear life. Whose, he’s unsure. Sam shakes, caught up and held secure; he thinks if they stay right here he’ll maybe be okay. Some day.

But Dean pulls away, apology and sorrow on his face. “Not here, we can’t, here.” He sets a pace between them, leaving Sam to stand on his own on coltish legs. Scrubbing a hand across his face, Dean casts his gaze to the ground, kicking hard at a piece of gravel. “We need to get to Colorado. Dad’ll be there.”

Sam has his doubts about this—their father was supposed to be in Jericho, too—but he knows the sooner they get there the sooner they’ll be able to leave. Dean’s looking at him with so much goddamn hope in his eyes, mouth used and obscenely red. Sam just wants it finished, so he nods through the grey pain that settles in his chest.

“Okay, Dean. All right.”


End file.
